Henry's Gift

The day Henry P., a client turned a friend of mine showed me what he called his secret cookie jar, which turned out to be an album or a portfolio of sorts, my own secret life began. For a long time, I could not shake off the disgrace that plagued me when the new interests and fascinations invaded my life. Each wave of guilty pleasure, dwarfing any prior sexual experience seemed to plunge me deeper into the unknown. At the age of 50, I was beginning to explore new territories, slowly bringing light to the gloomy corners of my soul, which most of us are so protective of, jealously hiding them from the prying eyes of the world. Sometimes denying even ourselves that they truly exist. 

I’ve met Henry as a client at the publishing company that I work for. Despite the reputation of an expert editor, nowadays I spend most of my working time in meetings, conferences and seminars, traveling a great deal. I leave the grueling work of editing and sometimes constant battling with an author to junior staff. They still seem to be passionate enough to overlook relentless challenging of their own minds by people who had enough time and will to sit down and put a heap of words into slightly coherent manuscripts, which would then have to be plowed through with a fine comb, eliminating typos, grammar mistakes, and unfortunate combinations of words, which seemed more of an overstuffed bag of rubbish than anything artistic. I am always amazed at how protective people can be of their work, despite the fact that some of it did not even reach a level of high school essay. It is quite fascinating to see how many people believed in themselves so strongly. Well, I think I’d rather not turn this into a literary critique, as my once impeccable taste for beauty and purity seemed to have parted ways with me. 

However, when Henry P. negotiated his series of manuscripts, which were to see the light of day as reference schoolbooks on ancient pottery, I was the one who was appointed to do the job. In his 40s, Henry had just achieved an amazing success as a painter; his talent was compared to that of Miro and young Kandinsky, his work selling like hotcakes. Despite the initial reluctance to commit myself to what seemed like a gigantic time consuming project, I finally agreed. To have my services requested by a man who seemed to be very professional and highly talented, well, what can I say? My ego was stroked many times over and I blindly plunged into grueling process of delicate, yet firm advisory to a man, whose own ego was inflated to the point of bursting. 

We had spent numerous days together, and as inevitably our professional relationship slowly developed into a friendship, I started visiting his house in the appropriately affluent part of London on frequent basis. Henry had always been smart enough to know that he was a tremendously good painter, however, his sculpting and pottery skills were limited in creativity, and to serve his passion, he elected to write books and hold lectures on the subject rather than dabble in it himself. His home was an actual artistic Disneyland to anybody with an eye for aesthetics, surprisingly lacking display of any of his own work, with the exception of the large studio at the bottom of the garden, literally packed with the harvest of his creative mind.

During one of the many afternoons that we spent together in his home, browsing and sorting through a mountain of photographs, sketches and Henry’s own miniature paintings depicting Greek pottery, the conversation swerved into the inevitable waters of sexual nature. At first, we were nostalgically reminiscing on our boyhoods, followed by exploration of our rather wild college years. I was astonished by the realization that what we both found most impressing were so-to-speak little steps in sexual growth. The fondest memories did not seem to be of wild sex, although there were a few mentioned, but rather our minds seemed to spew the imprinted images of smaller achievements on the road to the ultimate conquest. The first hand job ever, the first feel of the young, pear shaped breasts, the first time our trembling fingers touched the warmth of the girls’ wet crotches, which neither of us succeeded in entering beyond a quick feel at the time, and of course, the glorious first look at the open pinkness of pussies, encircling the little buds of feminine pleasure, appearance of clitorises described as oversized raisins. The last remark, which I believe was Henry’s, had us both barking with laughter. That moment made me feel youthful again, nostalgic mixes of what I would like to do again, as well as what I most certainly did not have the energy to go through, had I had a chance to repeat it all. 

‘Alright then,’ said Henry, wiping away tears of laughter, his body still jerking with giggles. ‘Confession time!’

This simple statement had us both in another bout of howling laughter. 

‘No, seriously!’ said Henry as we finally got hold of ourselves. ‘The kinkiest thing you’ve ever done, Trevor!’ His finger stabbed in my direction, his face a glow of expectation. 

How well did I know Henry to really confess to anything that should probably be kept private? Should I have told him about a 21-year old Dutch girl that I had fucked in the haze of hashish fumes just three weeks ago while attending a seminar in Rotterdam? She was younger than any of my own children.